Gingerbread Beach Hut

With a little bit of decorating, even a gingerbread house can have a stripy beach hut makeover and make the move to the seaside! Our Gingerbread House Cutter Set, always such a great seller for us over the Christmas season, stamps out a perfect little hut, all ready for its ‘paint’ job, bunting, and seagull and sand finish, so you can put this lovely set to good use over the summer too.

Instructions

To make the gingerbread for the hut, either use the recipe on the Gingerbread House Cutter Set box, or make your own favourite gingerbread or cookie recipe. (As you will not be using all the cutters in the set, you will have some dough left over if you follow the recipe on the box.) Leave your gingerbread to cool completely before decorating.

To start decorating your beach hut, divide the ready-to-roll white icing into two halves. Colour one part a duck egg blue using a tiny amount of blue food colouring. Roll this out to approx. 2-3mm thick and use the relevant cutters to cut two gable ends and two side wall shapes out of the icing. Brush a small amount of cooled boiled water onto the back of each icing wall to help it stick to the gingerbread.

Roll the white half of the icing out thinly. Cut out a rectangle for the door and use a heart cutter to cut a window out of that. Add a doorknob using a little ball of blue icing, then attach the completed door to one of the end panels. Use a ruler and pizza wheel to cut strips approx. 15mm wide and attach these to the panels at regular intervals to give the hut its striped look.

Colour the remaining white icing grey using a tiny amount of black food colouring. Roll out this grey icing to 2-3mm thick and use to cover the roof panels. Reserve any leftover grey icing.

Mix the royal icing sugar with a small amount of water to make a stiff piping consistency. Add to a piping bag and use to ‘glue’ the walls of the hut together. Leave to set for an hour before attaching the roof panels. Transfer your constructed hut onto a cake board, reserving the rest of the royal icing mixture.

Cut a strip of the reserved grey icing to cover the join at the top of the roof, and attach to the icing underneath using a little cooled boiled water.

Use the white modelling paste to make the seagull, lifebuoy and bargeboard.

For the seagull, shape a strawberry-sized amount of modelling paste into a teardrop shape and curl the pointed end upwards to make the tail. Roll a pea-sized amount for the head and attach with water. Shape two wings with grey icing (left over from the roof) and add a little orange food colouring to a tiny piece of modelling paste to make its beak. Draw on the eyes with a black edible ink pen. Once set, attach to the roof with a little royal icing.

To make the lifebuoy, roll a sausage of white modelling paste and coil into a circle approx. 5cm in diameter. Trim the ends and stick together with water. Colour a small piece of paste red using food colouring and roll it into a strip approx. 1cm wide and 10cm long. Cut this into four pieces and wrap each around the lifebuoy, dividing the circle into quarters.

For the bargeboard, roll out white modelling paste to approx. 3mm thick. Cut out two strips measuring 2 x 17cm. Attach these to the front edges of the roof panels with royal icing and trim to fit. Cover the join at the top centre with a diamond shape cut from the remaining modelling paste.

Colour some modelling paste in various pastel shades for the bunting – we used blue, pink and yellow. Roll out, cut into small triangles and attach to the beach hut with royal icing.

Sprinkle the brown sugar around the beach hut to make the ‘sand’, and prop the lifebuoy up against the front of your hut.

Tip: If, when you take the baked gingerbread pieces out of the oven, they’ve spread a little, you can use the cutters to re-cut the pieces and trim away any excess whilst they are still warm.